


An Uphill Bottle

by QuanticRomantic



Category: Oxventure (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, listen she technically said she loved him during the last ep and i need this to cope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuanticRomantic/pseuds/QuanticRomantic
Summary: So it's a bottle episode. Literally. Egbert finds a message in a bottle and things immediately go wrong. (Corazón/Prudence, sorry about it.)
Relationships: prudence/corazon
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	An Uphill Bottle

* * *

It began, as most disasters do, with Egbert the aptly named barrelling below deck, snout agape with excitement, night robes billowing behind him.

" _Guys_ ," he told his audience, pausing eagerly for effect.

Dob, the half-orc bard, turned a sleepy face toward the noise, sprawled in a hammock, small cat curled comfortably atop his chest.

"Guys," Egbert repeated pointedly.

With a sigh, Corazón glanced up from the floorboards where he was sat with The Darkness, feeding its pages dinner. "Guys, Egbert has an announcement."

Prudence peered up from her dark corner of the commons, a small, conjured fireplace menacingly illuminating her face. "Does he," she placed a dainty finger on Frisky to bookmark her place. "Go on."

Lazily, Merilwen uncurled with a spine-bending stretch and leapt off Dob's chest, paws landing softly before Egbert's feet, big dark eyes focused on Egbert's hands.

"I've found a thing," Egbert shared with a delighted, frenzied smile, scales shimmering in the candlelight, claws wrapped around a proffered glass bottle. "Could be a treasure map, could be a—"

"You had me at treasure, buddy, pal, _friend_ ," Corazón roared with a greedy grin and hopped to his feet, The Darkness left whining disapprovingly in his wake. "Give it."

Egbert gave an offended huff and protectively snatched the bottle out of reach. "No, listen," he argued, "as you may recall, I've recently fathered thirty-seven small children—"

"I offered to help," Dob reminded him, raising one long arm from his corner, hammock swaying.

"—so it's only proper I do right by them," Egbert continued, undeterred. "I'm afraid I must call dibs on this treasure. For child support, you know?"

Corazón scowled. "Egbert," he sighed, "haven't we built an orphanage for this purpose _exactly_?"

"What, to feed and house Egbert's many children?" Prudence murmured to herself with mild interest. "That was very prescient of us."

"Yes!" Egbert agreed earnestly, though it did seem as though he'd only now remembered the event. "We'll give the _orphanage_ the treasure! And the children."

"But—" Corazón started, vexed.

In one graceful movement, Merilwen shifted into her elven form, head cocked at the bottle, eyes hooded with possibilities. "It might not be a _treasure map_ , Egbert," she speculated sweetly. "It might be a _love letter_."

" _Or_ ," Prudence stood, Frisky fondly lapping at her feet, "consider this: it might be a curse."

Corazón did pause to consider.

"Yeah," he decided, deflating, "it's probably a curse."

Dob, who'd awkwardly untangled himself from the hammock with some haste, strode forward to examine the very plain looking bottle clutched between Egbert's fists.

"Okay, but—BUT," he said wisely, stooping to Merilwen's eye level to stare at the tightly-wrapped scrap of nondescript parchment within the bottle, "everything we've picked up _so far_ has been cursed." He poked a restless finger at the battered cork, presenting his argument. "It stands to reason this is, then, _not_."

Merilwen nodded in agreement, braids bouncing, pupils blown, gaze locked on the scroll inside the bottle, "I agree with Dob."

" _Why_ ," Corazón complained.

With a bored scowl, Prudence bent to pick up Frisky and The Darkness and unceremoniously marched forward to thrust both grimoires at Egbert.

Frisky took an immediate, experimental sniff and stilled instantly, its wagging tongue rolling back into its spine with a perturbed whine.

The Darkness thrummed briefly, its infernal lettering flashing a bright abyssal warning, then immediately shrank away, wrestling itself out of Prudence's fingers and plummeting to the ground with a yip.

"Mm," Prudence noted calmly as The Darkness hastily retreated under a gin barrel in a distant, dark corner, "bodes well."

Egbert seemed to run a sort of internal calculation.

Then shrugged, brought the bottle to his mouth, and yanked the cork out with his teeth.

* * *

" _I_ reckon," Merilwen lectured, panic lacing her voice, "we're still on the Joyful Damnation in _reality_ and therefore safe and this is an _illusion_ and we're not actually teeny tiny and trapped inside a giant bottle with all of our air running out. Right? _Right_?"

The group paused to crane their necks at the ceiling.

The ceiling, an impossibly remote mouth of a familiar bottle where the cork now laid safely reattached, greeted them back with a gentle, unassuming breeze.

But ominously, like a poorly-shaped moon, the scroll in the presumed centre of the bottle hung magically suspended, a thin, frayed red ribbon barely keeping it together.

It was either above them or ahead, somewhere in the convenient vicinity or a fathomless distance away, like the bottom of a dangerously clear lake—a meter away or beyond reach.

"Right," Prudence said, clicking her tongue at Dob. "I go eldritch blast; you go thunderwave, and we crack this stupid thing open?"

Obediently, Dob saluted her, and cracked his knuckles.

Moments later, a impressive boom of thunder and a wave of unspeakable horror, respectively, ricocheted off the curved glass walls in a loop, scattering the group in all directions in search of non-existent cover.

One beam of crackling energy zipped past Dob's head and he frowned, confused, then recklessly flicked his wrist again, releasing another tiny wave.

Predictably, the forces intercepted each other, promptly joined, and together, bounced off the glass wall and straight at Corazón, who ducked out of the way and scrambled behind Prudence for protection.

"Oh," Merilwen summarized, deadpan, watching the arc aim straight for the scroll, "and now it's on fire."

"It's fine, it's okay, it's fine," Egbert assured them, patting himself down for weapons, "if I remember my studies correctly, the fire will die when the oxygen runs out!"

"Uh huh, _uh huh_ ," Corazón agreed urgently, "so will _we_."

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Merilwen's conjured rain made quick work of the fire.

Surprisingly, however, the scroll had suffered no damage.

Instead, it seemed to shed its nondescript visage, ostensibly fuelled by the flames; old parchment cracking off to expose a dark, fractured skin like cooling lava, scarred through with glowing veins. The frayed ribbon shimmered with a healthy radiance, fatter and thicker and dotted with small holographic glyphs rotating and revolving around its ends.

"Right," Egbert said.

* * *

Many moments later, sat in a circle around an imaginary campfire, the scroll looming behind them like a monolith, the group exchanged defeated glances.

"Thoughts?" Dob asked.

Egbert opened his snout, then promptly closed it.

Another moment of uncomfortable silence settled around their weary shoulders.

Dob hesitated, distressed. "Surely, we must have _some_ ideas."

They didn't.

After several long minutes of silent contemplation, Egbert frowned. "It's a boss battle."

"What," Corazón scoffed, scrunching up his nose. "The bottle? A bottle boss battle?"

Egbert winced as though hearing this particular sequence of words made his remaining kidney ache. "The scroll...? Maybe?"

"We've certainly seen stranger things," Merilwen agreed, chin resting atop her knees.

" _Have_ we, though," Corazón mumbled to no one in particular.

"Well, if that's true, Egbert," Merilwen continued, undaunted, "if it truly is a cursed scroll, how do we beat it?"

"Uh," Egbert said, shifting his gaze to Prudence.

Mournful, Prudence sighed, petting the napping grimoire in her lap. "The Darkness has got the bestiary, so...." She trailed off, noncommittally.

"I see," Merilwen said, visibly struggling to bite back a disappointed sigh. "What does _Frisky_ have?"

"Fleas, occasionally," Prudence frowned to herself thoughtfully, fingers carding through Frisky's pages. "And a good heart!"

"Can't you just message The Darkness," Corazón suggested helpfully, waving one hand at the bottleneck above.

"I've messaged him an hour ago," Prudence explained with a worried look, "I wonder why there's a delay—"

"You don't think," Corazón said, equally dramatic, "something's happened to him?"

Affronted, Prudence opened her mouth to retort.

"We climb it," Egbert interrupted loudly.

"What," Prudence and Corazón asked in unison, turning to glare at Egbert with matching displeased expressions.

"We _climb_ the scroll," Egbert proposed patiently and scrambled to his feet, pounding one fist into his palm, confidence building, "and we kill it. The brain's gotta be at the top, right?"

After a beat, Corazón waved him off with a petulant, dismissive, "Sure."

"We'll need rope, a piton or two—" Egbert started pacing restlessly, "has anyone got some?"

Identical blank stares greeted him.

"No one's got _anything_?" Egbert lamented, incredulous.

"I mean," Corazón returned sarcastically, rising, "in my defence, I wasn't planning on getting vacuumed up into some stupid magic bottle whilst in my pyjamas."

"What's a vacuum," Dob asked innocently, climbing to his feet.

Prudence rose, gingerly placing Frisky by her slippers. "A void in space."

Corazón seemed to light up.

"Merilwen," he reasoned cloyingly, turning on his heel to tower over her, "your tentacles are a bit like rope, wouldn't you say."

Merilwen recoiled, standing. "I would not. I would not say."

"Merilwen," Egbert joined, suddenly intrigued, crowding her, "do you think you can slither up there and pop the cork out for us?"

Corazón paused, then asked, blunt, "Are you just going to keep listing stupid ideas until we suffocate?"

Egbert thought on it, then gave a tiny, serious nod. "Yes."

Dob piped up over the noise with a friendly, "What if I summoned my skeleton ar—"

"No."

"—NO—"

"No, shut up," Prudence held up an elegant palm. "Incoming." The tips of her horns resonated imperceptibly, face scrunched up adorably in concentration.

"Well, what is it, what's The Darkness saying?" Corazón demanded, impatiently hurrying closer as if to hear.

"He says," Prudence squinted, "it probably used to be a sorrowsworn."

" _Used_ to be?" Dob asked, eyebrows raised comically high.

"They're demons," Merilwen told him, indulgent, "that prey on grief and loss."

From the ground, Frisky insistently nudged at their feet.

"Cool but," Dob repeated, stubborn, toeing the grimoire out of the way, " _used to be_?"

"Right," Egbert joined in with great interest, "what is that thing _now_?"

Prudence pursed her lips, listening to a distant whisper. "Yeah. He doesn't know."

"Okay, what if," Dob started after a beat, a fervent, too-creative gleam in his eye, "what if it used to be one of those sad things and then it—and then it got curse-trapped in here by someone it had tried to mess with and the only way we're getting out of here is if we break its curse?"

"DOB." Merilwen help up a stern palm. "We are NOT doing that."

"Sadly," Prudence interrupted, dejected, "I don't sense evil from it."

Merilwen paused. "Actually. I don't either." She sniffled at the stale air. "It smells vaguely Trueheart-y on top."

"Has it got layers?" Corazón asked quietly but was ignored.

"Okay," Dob revised his hypothesis, tapping his foot, "so it was evil and then someone made it smell better; I'm sorry, how—how do we get out?"

Merilwen tilted her head at one of the glyphs, where druidic symbols interwove with infernal. "I think. I think we give it something—I think it will let us out if we give it something it's not gotten before."

"Well." Dob turned up an inquisitive palm, baffled. "What has it not gotten before?"

Too casually, Prudence looked up at the floating ends of the pulsing ribbon. "Sadly, it seems to want all our pleasant feelings."

"What," Corazón said, pale, jaw clenched, "that's ridiculous."

"But plausible!" Dob mused, stroking his chin. "Okay. I got it. You're saying we're trapped in here with a repressed demon until we confront our many feelings and express ourselves in a way that satisfies a giant demonic data-collecting scroll?"

The group took a moment to stare upward.

"Oh," Dob said happily, reaching for the lute strapped beneath his nightshirt, " _easy_!"

"Not necessarily... easy," Merilwen conceded, tugging her cowl up, "but certainly not impossible."

" _Mayhem_ is a feeling," Egbert decided easily enough, scratched the back of his head, and commenced the trek towards the scroll of indeterminate distance.

Tongue wagging, Frisky padded off after the trio, stopping once to look back expectantly at Prudence and Corazón, who'd fallen behind in awkward silence.

"So, we," Corazón cleared his throat, oddly hesitant, shoulder to shoulder with Prudence. "We have to tell it our _feelings_?"

Prudence hummed, staring straight ahead. "Yea."

"Ah," Corazón eulogized. "So we'll be dying here."

Prudence raised a commiserating eyebrow.

"Yea."


End file.
